Custom Incidents
Understand how external systems trigger incidents through custom incident services
A custom incident service lets an external system use MonitoringDog's incident and escalation flow without creating a scheduled check. The external system decides when to trigger the incident, and MonitoringDog handles incident records, escalation, and related history.
Use custom incidents when you already have your own health checks, job monitors, deployment checks, or business rules.
Custom incidents are not scheduled checks
Checks run on a schedule from MonitoringDog locations. Custom incidents wait for an external trigger.
| Feature | Check | Custom incident |
|---|---|---|
| Detection | MonitoringDog probes a target | Your system sends a trigger |
| Target | URL, host, port, or response condition | A service or workflow name |
| Status source | Monitoring results | External trigger and resolution flow |
| Escalation | Escalation policy on confirmed check incident | Escalation policy on custom incident trigger |
A service starts healthy
New custom incident services start in Up status. When the external trigger opens an incident, the service can move to Down while the incident is active.
The service details page links to incidents created for that service, so responders can review incident history separately from scheduled checks.
Escalation still controls notifications
Every custom incident service uses an escalation policy. When the service triggers an incident, MonitoringDog uses that policy to notify responders.
Use Escalation Policies and Severities to decide who receives notifications and which alert channels are used.
API tokens authorize trigger calls
The custom incident details page shows the trigger URL for the service. The page instructs developers to send a POST request with a team or organization auth token.
Use API Tokens and Scopes when you need to create or rotate API tokens for external systems.